Football: Dassel-Cokato Chargers carry on past Litchfield Dragons for 2AAA title
Nov. 3—BUFFALO — Dassel-Cokato made every possession count and got a pair of crucial stops to get past Litchfield and advance to the Class AAA state tournament at Buffalo High School.
Second-seeded Dassel-Cokato, which had zero turnovers and zero punts, bested the top-seeded Dragons in the Section 2AAA championship to pull out a late 27-20 victory over Litchfield on Friday. The Chargers play Minneapolis North, the Section 4AAA champion, at 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 11 at Orono High School.
"I'm super proud," Dassel-Cokato head coach Ryan Weinandt said. "Litchfield is a dang good team. We had to play almost perfect to beat them and we were close tonight.
"Our guys believed in what we were doing and put out a good performance tonight."
Dassel-Cokato had five drives in the game and scored on four of them. The Chargers' fifth drive came with under two minutes to go as they ran out the clock to secure its section title victory.
At the forefront of Dassel-Cokato's run-heavy offense was back Monte Gillman.
Gillman, a senior listed at 5-feet-7-inches, 165 pounds, scored three of the Chargers' four touchdowns.
Two of Gillman's touchdowns came on fourth down, including his game-winning touchdown run on 4th-and-2 from the 2-yard line, which helped give Dassel-Cokato a 27-20 lead following a successful two-point conversion off a reception by Caleb Smock from Caleb Thinesen.
"I'm happy for everyone," Gillman said. "It's a team game. It's not all about me."
When the two teams previously met on Sept. 30 in Week 5, where Litchfield secured a 14-13 victory, Gillman had a fumble on the goal line.
Given another crack at Litchfield, Gillman made sure that did not happen again and his effort has helped propel Dassel-Cokato to the state tournament for the first time since 2021 when the Chargers won the Class AAA title.
"Monte is so unselfish," Weinandt siad. "We feel we have three, four really good running backs.
"He is a player and he showed it tonight. In the big games, big-time players step up and he did a great job."
Litchfield got the ball trailing 27-20 following Gillman's third touchdown with 5 minutes, 10 seconds remaining.
Facing a 4th-and-2 from Dassel-Cokato's 24-yard line, Litchfield senior running back Lukas Kuehl was stuffed behind the line of scrimmage with 1:22 remaining before the Chargers charged to victory.
Dassel-Cokato's first crucial stop came early in the second quarter. The Chargers stopped Litchfield on a 4th-and-short play and turned it into six points off Gillman's first touchdown, which came on 4th-and-3 from the 3-yard line.
"It's always a battle between us and D-C," Litchfield head coach Jim Jackman said. "They had some big plays. We had some big plays. They just found a way to make a couple more plays than we did."
Litchfield got a pair of 1-yard touchdowns from Kuehl and another off of a quarterback sneak from Garrison Jackman.
"There were zero turnovers, there were zero punts," Jim Jackman said. "There were not very many possessions. You had to make the best of it."
